starring Frank Sinatra and Rita Hayworth, and after it was over, I found myself exiting the theater amid a sea of retirees. Not far from me was a husband and wife of perhaps eighty, and it occurred to me that they could very possibly have seen Pal Joey when it opened in October 1957! I lingered for a moment on the sidewalk and tried not to be too obvious as I listened to their conversation.
“That’s the kind of movie that puts a spring in your step,” the husband said.
“They don’t make them like that anymore,” the wife replied.
It was all I could do not to interrupt and concur that step-springing movies like Pal Joey were indeed a thing of the past—that is, unless Peter Bogdanovich was on the set to say “action” and “cut.” He is a much better director than George Sidney, too.
“In the American cinema, he is the man of the hour,” said one writer soon before the release of What’s Up, Doc?,21 and when Paper Moon was released in the spring of 1973, that hour was extended. Little more than a year had passed since Doc and only eighteen months since The Last Picture Show, but here was Peter Bogdanovich again—back in theaters with a smash.
This was no everyday occurrence. To put it into context, imagine that Citizen Kane had been a blockbuster and that Orson Welles followed it with two additional films of comparable critical and popular appeal—all in the space of less than three years. You might interject that Citizen Kane was a work of Important Cinema, whereas The Last Picture Show, What’s Up, Doc?, and Paper Moon were … what, exactly? Granting that Doc was conceived and marketed as an overtly commercial work (“A screwball comedy. Remember them?” read the tagline), the remaining two-thirds of the triad fell somewhere in the middle of the highbrow-lowbrow spectrum: impeccably made and morally serious films that were nonetheless completely accessible.
Welles himself had the right idea when in conversation with Bogdanovich he labeled his young friend “a popular artist.” At first, Bogdanovich bristled at the designation, but Welles explained that it was intended as a compliment. “Shakespeare was a popular artist. Dickens was a popular artist,” Welles said. “The artists I personally have always enjoyed the most are popular artists.”22 Later, when several of Bogdanovich’s films started to struggle commercially, he remained “a popular artist”: they never failed with audiences for lack of trying. Bogdanovich always invited the strangers in the dark to see themselves in the story he was telling—even if, on occasion, only a handful of strangers showed up because of problems in marketing or distribution or both.
Before Bogdanovich agreed to direct Paper Moon, he came close to pulling off what would have been his greatest feat: to go along with his coming-of-age drama and his screwball comedy, he planned to direct a Western of unusual ambition. The news was heralded on the front page of Variety in February 1972: “Superstar western planned by Peter Bogdanovich for first of three pix for Warner Bros. will be his own original script, ‘The Streets of Laredo’ … with cast including John Wayne, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Ryan O’Neal, Ben Johnson, Cybill Shepherd, and the Clancy Bros., Irish singing group.”23 After John Wayne got cold feet, and Bogdanovich saw no point in recasting a role conceived for a legend, the project was over—although the coauthor of the screenplay, Larry McMurtry, eventually spun a Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, Lonesome Dove, out of the material.
So Bogdanovich made Paper Moon—and as replacements go, he could have done much worse. An adaptation of Joe David Brown’s novel Addie Pray, the film is—not unlike What’s Up, Doc?—the story of one person in pursuit of another. Having made up her mind that lying, cheating, paternity-denying scalawag Moses Pray (Ryan O’Neal) is her father, orphaned eight-year-old Addie Loggins (Tatum O’Neal) spends the entire film trying to win his affection. Paper Moon takes the unfashionable but entirely convincing position that a daughter needs a father. That Moses is such a scoundrel certainly complicates the film’s current of patriarchy. But for Addie, any father—even one as unreliable as Moses—is better than none at all.
Of course, it is clear from the start that Moses leaves a great deal to be desired. He meets his purported daughter for the first time at the burial of her mother, a prostitute with whom he had a liaison. Standing with Addie at the gravesite are a minister with a voice that hymns were written for (“Rock of Ages” is sung at the makeshift service) and a coterie of kind-hearted old ladies who stew over what will become of Addie. Pointedly, Moses is not among the initial mourners. He shows his face late, bearing flowers pilfered from a nearby tombstone, and initially hesitates when it is suggested that he look after Addie until she can catch a train to St. Joseph, Missouri, where a distant relative is said to live. With his cheap suit, wide-brim hat, and insincere smile, the character is quickly, and brilliantly, sketched by Bogdanovich and O’Neal.
Not long after Moses has been shamed into caring for Addie, we learn how he puts food on the table: as the proprietor of the respectable-sounding Kansas Bible Company, he pawns copies of the Good Book to poor souls who have never placed an order in the first place. Scouring newspaper obituaries, he shows up at the doors of women recently widowed, claims that a late husband had ordered a customized Bible, and insists that a balance is due. The moment when Addie realizes what Moses is up to is a gem of visual storytelling. Waiting in the car while Moses does his usual song and dance for a widow named Pearl, Addie spots a folded newspaper in the driver’s seat. The name “Pearl” is circled in Pearl’s husband’s obituary, and when Addie snoops around in a trunk, she finds a stamp-and-ink set used to personalize the Bibles. The look of revulsion on Tatum O’Neal’s face as she puts it all together is not only very funny but reflects her character’s fundamental goodness.
Of course, Addie soon becomes Moses’s willing and energetic partner, pulling off quick-change maneuvers in front of unsuspecting dime-store cashiers, but she also injects an element of fairness into their schemes. For example, Addie assesses the socioeconomic status of their dupes before determining how much is to be charged for a given Bible. A well-fed elderly woman clutching a strand of fat pearls ought to pay more; a gaunt mother surrounded by a half-dozen scrawny children will get a discount.
In fact, we feel that Addie, in teaming up with Moses, is motivated less by nascent criminality than by a fervent wish to be near her sole surviving parent. Having been orphaned once, she cannot let it happen again. Similar motives inspire Addie to outwit a loose woman with whom Moses has shacked up, Trixie Delight (Madeline Kahn, as jiggly as a bowl of Jello in her satin blouse). In a brilliantly orchestrated sequence, Addie frames Trixie in the hotel where Moses has temporarily installed the gang. With the assistance of Trixie’s streetwise helpmate Imogene (P. J. Johnson—almost as good as Tatum O’Neal), Addie manages to entice a dopey front-desk clerk (Burton Gilliam, a one-of-kind bit comic player later reused in At Long Last Love) to meet Trixie in her room. When Moses finds the two of them in a compromising situation, he dumps Trixie, heartbroken over the betrayal.
Of course, we wish that Addie had a parent worthy of her—one like Byron Orlok or Sam the Lion or even “Frank D. Roosevelt,” as Addie calls the thirty-second president of the United States. She goes on and on about FDR—not, we suspect, for his policies or programs but for his warm parental manner. But Addie takes what she can get, and when she is finally deposited in St. Joseph, we understand why she is not tempted by the care of a benevolent relative or the comforts of a normal home: she wants her pa, even if it means a life of crime.
While the characters in Paper Moon treat the Bible with a notable lack of reverence—as a floppy black book to be written in and thrown about—few films better or more entertainingly illustrate the Fifth Commandment to honor thy mother and thy father.
When Tatum O’Neal won an Academy Award for her performance in Paper Moon, her acceptance speech encapsulated the ascent of the film’s maker: “All I really want to thank is my director,
